Hand tools may be used for e.g. cable termination when connecting a cable or a wire to power, coaxial, fiber-optic or modular connectors. Cable termination hand tools may comprise e.g. cutting tools, stripping tools and crimping tools. When crimping, a connector i.e. a terminal, splice, contact or a similar device is mechanically secured to a cable—e.g to a conductor such as a wire—by deformation so that a solid joint having reliable mechanical and electrical connection is formed. The crimping operation resulting in a crimped joint is e.g. performed using crimping dies.
Hand tools may comprise handles having a relatively soft surface, e.g. an outer covering, in order to increase the comfort in holding the tool when squeezing the handles together.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,024,000 A shows a symmetric hand tool with impact strength and wear resistance protection on handle ends arranged to protect the tool if the tool is dropped.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,270,134 B1 shows a symmetric hand tool having soft covering on handles.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,105,648 A shows an asymmetric hand tool having an easily grippable outer covering on both handles.
A drawback with such soft handles is that the friction between the users fingers and a moving handle increases compared to having the users fingers slide along a hard handle with lower friction, which makes it harder to press the handles together as the fingers will not slide on the handle surface as easily.
US 2008/0078273 shows a symmetric hand tool with polycarbonate handles.
A problem with the above hand tools is that if the force needed to press the handles of the hand tool together is very large such as may be the case when e.g. crimping a strong workpiece, even handles with low friction surfaces may be hard to press together using only the users hand force.